Review by Gabrielle
Battle of the Bookstores delivers a great love story perfect for the most ardent bookworms.
Favourite Quote:
I trail off. He’s leaning forward, listening intently. When his eyes meet mine, I get that bubbly, effervescent feeling I had on the beach, like I’m tipsy. Like everything I say is fascinating, and the world is warm and kind, and baring my soul to him feels like the most natural thing I could do.
Book Synopsis:
Despite managing bookstores on the same Boston street, Josie Klein and Ryan Lawson have never interacted much—Josie’s store focuses on serious literature, and Ryan’s sells romance only. But when the new owner of both stores decides to combine them, the two are thrust into direct competition. Only one manager will be left standing, decided by who turns the most profit over the summer.
Efficient and detail-oriented Josie instantly clashes with easygoing and disorganized Ryan. Their competing events and contrasting styles lead to more than just frustration—the sparks between them might just set the whole store on fire. Their only solace during this chaos is the friendship they’ve each struck up with an anonymous friend in an online book forum. Little do they know they’re actually chatting with each other.
As their rivalry heats up in real life, their online relationship grows, and when the walls between their stores come tumbling down, Josie and Ryan realize not all’s fair in love and war. And maybe, if they’re lucky, happily ever afters aren’t just for the books.
Review:
Bibliophiles rejoice! Is there anything better than reading about two hardcore bookworms falling in love? Not in my opinion. Ali Brady knows exactly what book lovers and romance readers want and they deliver.
Of course Ali Brady is the pen name for writing duo Alison Hammer and Bradeigh Godfrey. This is my first book by them, although they have been on my list for a bit. I’m so glad I finally read one of their books, I’ll definitely go back and read more of their back catalogue.
Plot wise, we’ve seen book selling rivals in other books, but I loved the unique twist they brought to it. Essentially, there are two bookstores on the same block, separated by a coffee shop. Both stores and the coffee shop are owned by the same developer who announces he will be merging the whole space into one big bookstore with a coffee shop in it. Now Josie, who runs the literary fiction store, and Ryan, who runs the romance only store, will have to compete to keep their management position. There can be only one.
Of course Ryan thinks Josie is super stuck up and an ice queen, always looking down on him and his patrons for reading romance. While Josie views Ryan and his store as a bit of a mess and not serious enough to deserve the manager role. They butt heads spectacularly in a bunch of interactions that will leave enemies-to-lovers and workplace rivals trope loving readers cheering.
Meanwhile, in a You’ve Got Mail style twist, they are each texting each other on BookFriends, a social media site for book professionals, except the site is anonymous, so they don’t know it’s each other they are texting. I’m such a sucker for this plotline. Can we call it a microtrope?
I loved both characters. Josie comes off as stuck up and icy, but really she’s just protecting herself. She’s terrified of repeating unhealthy relationship patterns she witnessed with her mother. Ryan is a fabulous book boyfriend. Kind and caring, I just wanted to hug him. He can seem a bit chaotic at times, but as we get to know him better, we see that he is really smart, he just has dyslexia, and needs a bit of time or help with certain tasks. Plus he’s a huge advocate for the romance genre and ensuring he stocks books where everyone can see themselves represented. Cue the swoons! Both characters are very well developed and thanks to the alternating POV chapters, we really get to know both of them well.
As the walls come down between their respective stores, it forces more and more interactions between them and they start to get to know each other better irl, even as they are revealing more and more to each other online. It is absolutely delicious.
One of my favourite things about this book is that because they run very different bookstores, and neither of them understand the other’s love for their own genre, there is a great exploration about what makes each of these genres so great as they try and justify their stores to each other. As they get to know each other better, they each get a deeper understanding of the other genre too. For Josie, that means learning more about romance books and what makes them so great, and for Ryan, it means learning more about literary fiction. As a bookworm that loves both of these genres, I appreciated this discussion.
Battle of the Bookstores is a great read that will leave bibliophiles swooning (and cheering).
Thank you, Berkeley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
